


Semantics

by 50mg



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, No Captain America, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:39:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3916681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50mg/pseuds/50mg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quitting is not the same as losing. And Steve is already so much further ahead than he ever thought he'd be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Semantics

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read. Everything is based purely on the movies.

Steve always knew that Bucky would go to war. The draft would have gotten him no matter what, obviously, but Bucky would have joined willingly (and had, had done what Steve couldn't but wanted to and he needs to stop this line of thought before it leads him to bitterness). 

Still, seeing his best friend in his new uniform looking sharp stings. It's not that Steve holds it against Bucky, but his longing is so strong that the sharp lines of the uniform seem to extend from the fabric and slice into him. 

(It doesn't help that Bucky has a girl on his arm, the casual joy they bring to one another so effortlessly something Steve could never find in a stranger.)

However, he knows a little of war from the movies and posters and the haunted eyes of those returned and so he does his very best to smile for Bucky. Steve wants his smile to be remembered when Bucky is achingly weary from the fighting, not his bitterness. And maybe he's assuming that he'll be what Bucky thinks of in the trenches, but hope is really all he's ever had in that regard. 

Not that he would ever do more than hope. And Steve knows that to confess to his heart's quiet stirrings would be cruel at this juncture- though he doesn't quite dare to imagine that anything would actually come of it, so silence is the most noble (cowardly) course of action. 

If he never admits to wanting then he can't be denied. Quitters don't technically lose, after all. In the dark of his room, usually on nights when he has seen Bucky smiling and charming and sliding his arms around beautiful girls, Steve tortures himself with the what ifs- what if Bucky refused him, accepted him, ignored him, what if, what if, what if. 

Around and around he goes, spinning uselessly in the mire of his dread until exhaustion claims him. But today, seeing Bucky in his shiny new clothes that don't have grime on them (yet, there will be blood later, and too much of it), Steve knows he can't speak. 

Regardless of Bucky's answer, he must leave. And the shock of Steve's confession, whether good or bad, would be distracting, something that could easily lead to death in the carnage of Europe. Steve couldn't bear being responsible for Bucky's injury. (He refuses to acknowledge the stark fact that Bucky could die.)

And all of these feelings are shot through with his bitterness at being denied a chance to enlist, to fight and protect. He understands the why of his rejection, but this is the latest in a long string and while he thinks he could have faced it with Bucky's support his best friend won't be there to help (will be dodging bullets and watching men's guts spill out of their bodies and ending lives in service to his country). 

Bucky is grinning at the girl on his arm, swaggering around the fair as though he hasn't a care in the world, as though he won't be dodging bullets in a few short days. He turns, looks to Steve, always watching for his friend, whether it's to save him from cruel men or Steve's own awkwardness. Bucky beckons Steve over, clearly not wanting him to miss out on any fun, and Steve appreciates the kindness. 

If his smile is strained when he joins Bucky, he does his best to smooth it out and ignore the slim hands wrapped around Bucky's arm. Steve can live with his hope, frail though it might be, simply because he must. He ignores the temptation to pull his friend aside and whisper in his ear, and instead offers the second girl (a third wheel as much as he is) his arm, smiling all the way. 

And it will be enough. It will also be all that he ever has, for three months later there is a flag, carefully folded, topped with a short and impersonal letter that couldn't possibly hope to encompass all that Bucky meant to the world, to Steve. 

And it was enough, because it had to be- and so the hope that then carried Steve through his grief was the same hope that drove him six feet under several years later (official cause of death: complications from a chest infection). The infection was a secondary cause; it did far less damage than the other pain in his chest. Steve never said a word, not to anyone, and quietly passed away much as he had lived- undenied not because of another's will, but their ignorance. 

But it was enough.


End file.
